BRANCHING OUT

ALEX JONES IS HELPING PEOPLE TO FIND THE MISSING LINKS IN THEIR FAMILY TREES…

Alex Jones will be helping members of the public to solve long-standing family mysteries with the help of experts and some groundbreaking technology in a new series beginning this week. Using a DNA test, they have a chance to find new leads in the search for missing relatives – but will they get the happy ending they hoped for? Inside TV sat down for a chat with Alex to find out…

Tell us about the show…

It’s a brilliant, emotive piece of television that I think will strike a chord with lots of people. The contributors are at the end of their tethers, looking for members of the family who they’ve lost for some reason, because of some secret that happened, sometimes generations ago. Everybody is searching for somebody else, which we do using a DNA test pioneered by Ancestry. The genealogists take both myself and the contributor on a journey to unravel this big secret.

What sort of stories were behind the searches?

In the first episode you have Kirsty – she’s looking for her father, who left when she was two. He and her mother weren’t getting on, so he left and she stayed with her mum. This never sat right with the dad, who went on to marry again and raised two children, but at the back of his mind was always Kirsty. Her mum never shared any information – all Kirsty knew was her dad left when she was two. She didn’t know he was still thinking about her.

It sounds like it all gets very emotional – did it get quite intense when you were filming?

It’s a very long process, and you see people at their most vulnerable. They lay everything down in the first interview we do, and it can be hard to listen because of abusive relationships and terrible childhoods. Sometimes there’s a good ending, but not always – it’s very hard, you celebrate with them when the ending is good, and you commiserate with them and feel very disappointed when it’s not what you hoped for.